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Credit Suisse Group is preparing to cut roughly 3% of its work force, or at least 1,500 jobs. That includes staff cuts at its private banking unit, which is struggling with a costly surge in the value of the Swiss franc, a person familiar with the situation said.

Of the jobs that will be cut, 500 are in Credit Suisse's private bank, where the Swiss franc strength against other major currencies is a worry, as it eats away at revenue and assets. The Swiss currency strengthened nearly 7% against the euro and more than 9% against the dollar in the second quarter.

The 1,500 total includes a previously reported 600 jobs at Credit Suisse's investment bank, after a lacklustre second quarter.

Marc Dosch, a spokesman for the Zurich bank, didn't comment on the specific numbers. He wrote in an emailed statement: "Managing costs proactively is an ongoing priority - also in the current challenging environment."

While investment-banking job cuts were expected following a slowdown on Wall Street in recent months and cuts at rivals, the private-bank cutbacks are more of a surprise.

Many Swiss private banks are taking a hard look at their spending, given that a high proportion of their costs are in Swiss francs while most of their revenue is in other currencies, chiefly the dollar and euro. The strong franc also erodes the value of assets held in other currencies.

Credit Suisse's private bank took a 130m Swiss franc ($159m) pretax hit from the franc in the first quarter, when net profit fell 45% to 1.14bn francs.

Credit Suisse is not the only major private bank to weigh staff cuts in recent weeks. Crosstown rival UBS is cutting 250 jobs from a private-bank unit that offers investment bank-style products to wealthy clients, a person said this month. That comes on top of 500 jobs that it is cutting in information technology, the bulk of which are in Switzerland and the US.